The looming shortage of carbon credits threatens the supply of imaginary virtue, as 900 companies that exhale 9 billion tons of carbon annually compete to pretend they’re healing the planet by giving money to those that don’t pump carbon into the atmosphere. What will we do when the price of imaginary virtue shoots up to unaffordable levels?
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32 replies on “Hot Tip: Looming Carbon Credit Shortage Threatens Supply of Imaginary Virtue, So Stock Up Now”
I recall a website a few years back where you could enter your energy consumption per day and the app would calculate your carbon footprint. It would then tell you how much money you needed to pay in order to offset your footprint. I wondered why anyone would a) believe the calculations to be accurate and b) send money to make themselves feel better. PT Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute!
If we’re going to have carbon credits, the only thing they should fund is carbon capture projects.
Musk (yeah, that guy again) has a prize out for anyone who can come up with a working, scalable prototype.
All you need to know about Carbon Capture – YouTube
I like Sabine. She’s a real scientist (she’s actually a theoretical physicist) but she’s really good about separating what is science from what isn’t, and science from opinion. She’s even starting a new series soon where she’ll read the daily science news and separate the gold from the crap.
In the video, she does cover the tree CO2 sequestering and calculates that trees wouldn’t be enough. Algae is proposed as a solution (and also … in another video, as biofuel … which recycles carbon already in the air). Fast-growing plants are the ones that drink up the most CO2, by the way. I firmly believe that this is going to be what we end up doing. Finding ways to remove it from the system long-term.
There ARE people actively working on real solutions that don’t involve funny money.
I may not agree with Sabine on everything, but I have that strange ability to be able to listen to people I don’t agree with 100%. Particularly when they openly highlight the shortcomings of … well, every argument. She’s really good, and I’d water right most of the time. And I love her dry sense of humor.
Elon Musk has already cracked the lithium problem. He’s funding a plant to crack the lithium out of Utah’s large lithium rick clay stone deposits. It grinds the clay to micro-particles in an special gas mix that strips the surface lithium off as an unreactive hydroxide.
Its worse than you think. If you invent a very good carbon neutral power source the carbon credit people will shut you down because a perfect non carbon solution counts as tax cheating. Half the carbon credits are funding socialist projects around the world. It costs a few cents to plant a tree, I know I did thousands, the carbon credit companies are charging up to a dollar a tree. The difference goes to the WEF, Soros, the DNC, etc. In some places its overtly taxed to pay for third world governments via land permitting fees.
We have the IPCC actively opposing a dozen energy solutions: Test tube fusion; yes some of us are still working on that. Up-draught solar chimney; the go to solution in the 1980’s that works but the local government where it was done in Spain stole all the maintenance funds. Its still there and people with money want to fix it but no the local government forbids it. Solar and wind Pneumatics: another 1980’s solution that gets bought up and shut down. Ethanol or wood gas Hybrid cars: nope verboten.
A technological solution defunds the carbon credit energy taxation system.
It ain’t all about power production. Try making steel without a large carbon dioxide output! We do still want steel don’t we???
Lol actually we do know how to make steel without carbon output. The National Space society, the Mars Society and Nasa has been playing with that for decades. Its done with fluoric acid & iron oxide in a solar furnace. Useful on the moon and mars but way to expensive on earth. A second solar furnace regenerates the Fluoric oxide back into fluoric acids. It can be done with all metals. It still needs carbon input though to make high carbon steel. Its hard on the moon; this works best with Luna aluminum. Easy on mars, just make an algae farm to suck up the Martian CO2 to get carbon for the steel.
Did I mention that I’m a mad scientist in search of a lab?
Wesley – I like the cut of your jib. If I had Bezos’ money I would gladly fund your lab.
But – can’t you just hear the climate crazies telling Musk not to ruin the pristine Martian atmosphere by removing the CO2?
mmm this seems to have triggered a glitch with the post triggering multiple references in the notifications, 5 in total?
On mars the greenies are called the red mars faction. lol. Kim Stanley Robinson is brilliant.
P.T. Barnum was a low-ball estimator of SUCKER production rates. LOL
https://youtu.be/xf7WOy9QvwA
The Heat Is On: Bjorn Lomborg on the Summer’s Record Heatan excellent analysis and discussion of other options
Red Skelton made a movie called ‘Excuse My Dust 1951’ about an 1895 inventor developing a horseless carriage. Always willing to plug a forgotten good movie.
I don’t care how much lithium you have for batteries as it will do no good for the wonderful EVs that are being pushed when all the EVs in Miami head north for an evacuation and get to Jacksonville to charge up. Can anyone say BIG MESS
After watching this video, and yes, being disgusted years ago with Ken Lay, Enron and made-up carbon credits, I thought of this.
How many folks pushing the greenhouse gas theory drink soft drinks, like Coca Cola or Pepsi or San Pellegrino or any other carbonated beverage ?
Not all of them drink Chai or Kombucha.
I channeled my inner Iowahawk (see Bill’s “Eat the Rich” Firewall which is searchable on YT) and did a brief calculation of how much carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere when pouring and consuming a 12 ounce of regular Coke.
Then went to 2019 Stats from Coca Cola of worldwide consumption of “servings” of Coca Cola per day.1.9 Billion servings of Coke….in 1 day. A quick google search for how many ounces of CO2 are in 1 can of Coke led me to some quick math and….
In 1 day, 360,430 US tons of Carbon Dioxide are released from consumption of Coke, worldwide.
Extrapolate that to 364 days and you get,
131,196,520 tons of CO2 just from drinking coke. In a year.
This includes all the Coca Cola drinks, but doesn’t include Pepsi, 7-up, Perrier, San Pellegrino, sparkling water, or all the other sub brands of soft drinks or Champaign or Beer or whatevs.
While I think the math is correct, the biology and physiology may be flawed. My esteemed and brilliant BWDC co members probably know the answer to this, but I’ll ask for the record. When introduced to the human body through the drinking of Coke, is CO2 metabolized into something else? Or is it just passed through the body and released at burps and farts?
I’d like to teach the world to stop drinking Coke, says, Coke????
https://billwhittlecom.wpenginepowered.com/eat-the-rich/
No need to search youtube. It’s here on BWDC.
I remember when that one first came out – still one of my all time favorite videos from Bill
Regarding CO2 burps, the more mammals and other animals there are breathing, the more CO2 is produced just by us breathing. This would alarm the people that think dihidrogen monoxide is dangerous as they forget that plants turn H2O and CO2 into oxygen. So the more we breathe out the more plants can “breathe” in and the more of them there will be.
Dihydrogen monoxide is EVERYWHERE! it kills men, women, children…all genders. Painfully and slowly, inside the home or outside. It kills regardless of the weather or time of day
It could happen to. It could happen to me. Any time. Anywhere. We MUST ban that horrible compound immediately….for the Chilllldrennnn!
RR – Don’t forget that the insane climate lobby wants to reduce cow burps and farts, too, as part of their AGW campaign.
Yes, but…. Where do you think the CO2 in pop comes from? It comes from the atmosphere. Its put in artificially. Now, CO2 in beer and sparkling wine comes from fermentation.
I also like to ask people if increased CO2 is a cause of global warming or a result. Warm liquids dissolve solids better than cold. However, cold liquids dissolve gases better. It has to do with relative expansion rates. There is a lot CO2 in sea and fresh water.(Amounts, not percentages.) As they get warmer, more CO2 goes into the air.
I love to mess with peoples mind by bringing this up.
Note: You may argue that O2 is in water also and that when water gets warmer it also goes into the air. But CO2 is a bigger molecule, so it goes into the air in a higher percentage.
Now, now Harry. That is just not fair interjecting facts and logic into someone’s nice emotional
breakdownargument.And trying to get average people to understand things like chemisty and physics. Well, to steal a phrase.
How Dare You!!
Aw, c’mon. Let a guy have a little fun.
And as to your “How Dare You!”…..
I dare with great glee, enjoying the ensuing chaos!😂
So, I just used the occasion and simple math to have everyone writing burps and farts into their messages. Harry’s comment proves we have brilliant members who use actual facts in their messages.
So my adolescent attempt to have people typing the word fart, actually got me to thinking about all that CO2 injected into , as Harry notes, “pop”. My followup question is, how is that carbon dioxide made, found, mined, otherwise produced, and how does it find it’s way into liquified pressure vessels delivered to Coca Cola bottling company plants around the world by the….Gillions.? It doesn’t grow on trees, so how’s it acquired? I have to think it requires some electricity to accomplish this. I wonder if WokaCola only uses solar in the acquisition of CO2, and the transportation thereof to it’s many bottling plants.
Yep, it probably uses electricity get get the CO2 out of the air. Put pressure on, release it,the air gets cold enough to solidify the CO2 (otherwise known as “dry ice”. ) Let that sublime (go directly to gas without becoming liquid first). At least that’s one way. The specifics may be different.
Note: Chemical Engineering degree. Doesn’t negate my being brilliant; but instead proves it😜
Whenever this topic comes up, I am compelled to repeat this same analysis which proves, irrefutably, that carbon dioxide is not a significant factor in climate change or global warming.
First, we must understand the most fundamental principle of modern science: All valid scientific theories MUST be testable. That is, they must be able to predict something which must be true if the theory is true. If that ‘something’ disagrees with the theory’s prediction, we must conclude that the theory is false. It is as simple as that, and that is why modern science has been so successful. Theories must be testable and we only keep what works and discard what doesn’t.
The greenhouse gas theory which claims human activity causes global warming (by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere) is a “valid” scientific theory. It is valid because it is testable. It predicts certain observables which must be true if the theory is true.
For example, greenhouse gas theory predicts that the temperature trend in the tropical troposphere should increase at a rate greater than the surface rate. This makes sense because, if the warming begins in the atmosphere then, we should expect to see the effects there first.
However, 70 years of balloon and satellite data show that the trend in the atmosphere is lower than the trend at the surface. Observations show the exact opposite of what the theory predicts so, we must conclude that the theory is wrong.
But wait! Greenhouse gas theory (and all of the general circulation models) also predict that radiation into space should decrease as the ocean temperatures increase. This is because, as ocean temperatures increase, the theory expects that more water vapor will be released from the oceans. Since water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, the theory expects even less radiative energy can get through the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, decades a satellite observations show that radiation into space increases at about three times the rate that greenhouse gas theory predicts that it should decrease. Again, our observations show the exact opposite of what the theory predicts.
Either one of these failed observations is enough to irrefutably conclude that the greenhouse gas theories and general circulation models which predict global warming due to increases of CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of human activity are wrong and policy should not be based on their predictions.
Finally, as a side note, why does Scott refer to CO2 as a pollutant? CO2 is the PRIMARY food source on the planet.
Agreed and … If anything the ‘science’ says we need more not less CO2. According to Freeman Dyson, may he rest in peace, the rise in CO2 has led to a 10% increase in crop yields. That’s a very significant increase.
We may be responsible for some of the CO2 rise but that rise is probably not detrimental. Trees grow much bigger much faster at higher CO2 levels and release less water vapor to boot. This means that the world’s forests automatically sequester more CO2 due to size and growth rate at higher CO2 levels. This goes for photosynthetic plants across the board.
Right now the CO2 content of the atmosphere is +/- 400 PPM. Human beings exist very comfortably at several multiples of that figure. CO2 in manned spacecraft is considered well inside acceptable parameters at 1,500 PPM for example.
CO2 is definitely not a pollutant.
You know that the Left isn’t really serious about the reality of anthropomorphic climate change when they don’t take anything seriously that depletes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The only way they can wield power is by restricting CO2 generation. You can’t take them seriously when they rapidly react to an article out of Ga Tech suggested that if it was a little warmer there would actually be more farmable land, much of which was quite fertile. Then there’s the fact that less people would freeze to death.
We underestimate the “fine-tuning” of the universe. Our miraculous planet with its many redundant feedback systems is beyond understanding. Reading the latest book from Eric Metaxas, “Is Atheism Dead?”, and learning things (like the mass of the universe cannot be one dime heavier or lighter without everything going to crap) lends the idea of an intelligence way, way beyond our understanding at the helm.
Even as a clueless college student 3 decades ago, when carbon credits came up in some of my Econ classes it struck me as vaporware BS.
Of course, had I been smart I would have “invested” in it and gotten rich like algore
At the rotten core of the “renewable” energy scam is that wind and sun, although sporadic, are continuing resources, but lithium, nickel, cobalt, zinc, copper, molybdenum, and rare earth metals are finite, and without those elements, energy cannot be harvested or stored in any effective way. BTW, can I buy carbon credits with bitcoin?
Gimme a break guys!
How about a session (or a few, the evidence is voluminous) showing that climate change is happening (it always has and always will) but the human affect component is trivial. Nothing that humans can do (other than a nuclear inferno) will affect our climate in any significant manner.
Alan, Bill has done a number of commentaries over the years on the subject you suggest. Your initial sentence seems facetious…unless you didn’t watch the video and have overlooked the facetious nature of the headline. Either way, thanks for weighing in. Glad you’re here.
I read an article (about six to ten years ago?) which proposed that the industrial revolution, and all the soot it belched out into the atmosphere, saved the planet. Carbon dioxide at the time had reached dangerously low levels.Carbon dioxide in ancient times was much, much higher, and had been gradually depleting over the centuries.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is essential for life on Earth.
“It’s almost like there was a feedback loop to prevent the earth from becoming a waste land.”
Hey, that God of ours is a really smart Creator!